I don't think Sheamus will be a part of my household for much longer.
A few months back someone suggested to me that the beautiful male betta I call Sheamus was probably too cold in his water, and that explained why he was quite listless and no longer made funny fish faces when at me when he wanted food. He got moved to a few warmer rooms, but I saw no improvement. I tried keeping a lamp on him to make sure the water was warm enough. Nothing. By this time, he wasn't even eating food, really. And the worst part was that he seemed to be losing control of his balance. He kind of "bent" in the middle at times. Plus he was constantly at the top of his bowl, which was weird.
I finally decided it was high time I give up on the "water's too cold" diagnosis and seek help from a qualified fish person. The folks at Elmer's Pet Store (they have about 7 billion fish there. Not really. But there are a lot!) said it's mostly likely a bacteria or fungal infection and to use some drops to fix it. So I've been using them, doing water changes every day. I even moved Sheamus from the regular bowl to some new containers (okay...so they're Tupperware...) in case the bowl had some sort of residual infectious material that was adding to his problem.
Still...after a week, I saw no change. In fact, he seems to be getting worse. His lovely flowy fins are getting sort of frayed, and he's losing the brilliant blue color in his scales. I cannot recall the last time he ate - it seems like it must have been months ago! (I don't quite understand how he can till be alive if this is the case, but I am positive it's true! Perhaps the cold blood makes it possible.) I went back to Elmer's, and all they could say was to keep using the drops. They also convinced me to try feeding him live food, which meant buying a bag of brine shrimp (a.k.a. "sea monkeys"), which cost something like $1.72 and I got about 75 thousand shrimp.
And thus begins the short tangent I will go on regarding brine shrimp...
I had read long ago that this is what bettas "should" eat. Well, sorry, but I don't particularly want to care for the pet's food as well as the fish, so I stuck with fish pellets for Sheamus, which he loved. And now I am really glad I never gave brine shrimp a shot.
The night I bought the brine shrimp, I studied them closely for a few moments, intrigued by their exceedingly small but detectable bodies - black pin-prick eyes obvious against translucent little "fin" things and tails. I plunked a dozen into the water with Sheamus and noticed that there were three "types" of shrimp. One had all translucent bodies. One had a brown blob about midway down the body. The final type appeared to be two shrimp stuck together. And upon further investigation, I determined that there was always one brown-blob and one no-blob shrimp when they were stuck together. (Ah - a note here - this next is going to be the X-rated part of the post if you care to not read that...) It doesn't take a whole heck of a lot of brains to figure out that the two-stuck-together shrimp were a male (no-blob) and female (brown-blob) shrimp in the act of mating.
I confirmed this the next day by finding more information about brine shrimp online. Apparently, these suckers are quite prolific, which is why they would be such wonderful "pets" (or culturable food for pets...).
However...at the end of that day when I returned home, all twelve of the shrimp I had put in with Sheamus to eat (the thought of him eating these guys did seem a bit revolting, to be honest) were still there. So...that ruled out the possibility of "Sheamus isn't eating because his food is too boring." I didn't really want to continue seeing if I could intice Sheamus to eat - for if my efforts failed, I would merely be forcing him to spend the last days of his life in the presence of tiny invertebrates having sex, and I actually care about Sheamus enough to not do something as obnoxious as that. Therefore, I am left with a bag of 75 thousand minus 12 brine shrimp. I shan't tell you the bag-o'-brine shrimp's fate.
In the end, all I can do is wait. Wait and see if Sheamus miraculously gets better. Or wait and see how long he lives before he reaches the proverbial toilet bowl (actually, I have a little box all set to act as a "casket" for him to be properly buried in the ground - no flushing for that special guy!).
Life has been teaching me a lot lately that I just need to wait for a lot of things. I always thought my biggest struggle with patience was my inability to not freak out when people or situations got rough, and I've been getting better at that (if my self-assessments count for anything) -- but I realize now that patience comes in at least two flavors: short-term and - the one I'm finding is more difficult - long-term.
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